“Christmas Pots” from Bavaria

As we approach Christmas, I put together this post. Here are two slip glazed pots thrown and decorated by Anton Lang. The story of this actor and potter is an interesting one and adds a certain cachet to these otherwise unremarkable pots.

In the early 1600's the Thirty Years' War ravaged Bavaria, including the village of Oberammergau. This war was followed by the Black Plague, which was even worse. In 1633 the inhabitants of Oberammergau promised God that thereafter, once every ten years, they would dramatize the last earthly days of Christ, if only Heaven would stop the Black Plague that had penetrated even into the Bavarian Alps. The Plague abated. The Passion Play has been presented in Oberammergau ever since, beginning in 1634.

Anton Lang (1875–1938) was a German studio potter and an actor in the Oberammergau Passion Play. He played the honored lead role of Jesus Christ "Christus" in 1900, 1910, and 1922. In 1923-24 Lang visited the U.S. and threw pots at the famous Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio. He also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in December, 1923.

Not every vase marked “Anton Lang” found today was made by him. After Anton Lang died his son Karl Lang (1903 – 1990) carried forward with the Anton Lang workshop. In 1975 after Karl Lang retired, his daughter Barbara Lampe and her husband took over the workshop. They renamed it in only in 1995.

The two examples shown here are mine. The vase is 8 inches tall and the pitcher 6 inches tall. The colors and decorations seem to me to fit well into the Holiday Season.

(Various internet sources, including Wikipedia, used in putting this together.)